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In City Under Stress, Chennai’s Water Bottlers Build a Thriving Business
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CHENNAI, India – T. Rajan tried all manner of entrepreneurial enterprises. He sold scrap paper and cardboard to recyclers. He built a street corner chai and cigarette cart, and repaired truck and bus tires. He started an office cleaning service for high-tech companies in the growing IT sector south of the city center. None of these delivered the financial returns and workday flexibility of selling clear, sky blue, 20-liter water “cans” in Chennai’s immense bottled water industry.
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Worst Drought in 140 Years Leads to Farmer Deaths, Riots, Policy Impasse in Cauvery Delta
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VENGANTHANKUSI, India – Vijayakumar, 51, was a successful rice grower his entire life until this rainless harvest season. Described by family and friends as a tall, steady man of few words, Vijayakumar seemed unbent by the paralyzing consequences of Tamil Nadu’s deepest drought in 140 years.
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Chased by Drought, Rising Costs, and Clean Technology, India Pivots on Coal
›VILAMBUR, India – The mammoth coal-fired Cheyyur electrical station was first imagined by bankers at India’s Power Finance Corporation and senior engineers across town at the Central Electric Authority. That was in 2005, when the country was rich in fossil fuel resources and desperate for electric power. Though India mined more coal than almost any other country, endemic blackouts and brownouts enfeebled its economic prospects.
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Introducing “Choke Point: Tamil Nadu,” a Look Inside One Indian State’s Struggle With Severe Water Stress
›TUTICORIN, India – Among the 75 government agencies that manage and regulate this bewitching and often impassioned nation, there is no Ministry of the Future. There should be.
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Can the “World’s Largest Urban Area” Clean Up Its Act? Shenzhen and the Pearl River Delta
›SHENZHEN, China – In 1980, the year Deng Xiaoping established Shenzhen as China’s first special economic zone, opening its mercantile sectors to market capitalism and free trade principles, an attractive, tree-shaded commercial district known as Dongmen was home to 30,000 residents near the center of a metropolitan region of 300,000.
Thirty-five years later, Dongmen is a crowded commercial neighborhood of 300,000 residents at the edge of a metropolitan region of 18 million, China’s fourth largest.
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In Shenzhen, Tracking the Early Steps of China’s Carbon Pivot
›SHENZHEN, China – To some extent, the contemporary industrial age is a global narrative of substance abuse and recovery.
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Oakland’s Water Treatment Plant Generates Its Own Energy and Then Some
›Although treating wastewater generally ranks alongside police and fire safety, schools, and transit as the top priorities of any sensible city hall, new ideas about cleaning up sewage almost never attract headlines or TV airtime. In its 90-year history, for instance, The New Yorker, the most urbane and expansive magazine in the country, has never published a feature article on sewage treatment.
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Oakland’s Web of Waters Shapes New Economy, Civic Energy
›In March 1999, not long after he was sworn in as the 47th mayor of Oakland, Jerry Brown called Lesley Estes, the supervisor of the city’s watershed protection program. Brown, who is now California’s governor, wanted the city staffer he called “Creek Lady” to describe the most formidable ideas she had to conserve natural areas, make parks more beautiful, and clean up the city’s waters.
Showing posts by Keith Schneider.
